Sattareh Farman Farmaian

Sattāreh Farmānfarmā'iān (; December 23, 1921 – May 21, 2012), also Sattareh Farman-Farmaian, was an Iranian author, social worker, and was of Qajar nobility. She was one of the daughters of Persian nobleman and Qajar Prince, Abdol Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma, through mother Massoumeh. She was a pioneer within the field of social work in Iran, and she was the first Iranian student to attend the University of Southern California (USC).

Family

Sattareh Farman-Farmaian, a daughter of Abdol Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma, Prince of the Qajar dynasty, and Massoumeh Khanum Tafreshi (1899–1978; his third wife of eight), was born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1921, the fifteenth of thirty-six children (and third of nine children by her mother).

She had eight siblings, four brothers (Sabbar, Farough, Ghaffar, and Rashid) and four sisters (Jabbareh, Homy, Sory, and Korshid).

Education

Farman-Farmaian attended the Tarbiat School, a Bahá'í school in Tehran until its closing in 1933 by Reza Shah Pahlavi. The school was the first of its kind in Iran. Soon after, she assisted in the founding of the Family Planning Association of Iran which, with assistance from the Pathfinder Fund (now Pathfinder International), attempted to educate young mothers on family planning and the use of birth control in accordance with Islamic law. In the fall of 1958, she was called for an interview with Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who himself pledged funds for the support of the school. In 1962 she was awarded the Alumni Award of Merit by the University of Southern California. Following the 1963 riots in which many protested the jailing of Ruhollah Khomeini (later Ayatollah Khomeini) and over two hundred were injured or killed by the military, the Tehran School of Social Work was asked by Premier Asadollah Alam to identify the families of victims so that reparations could be paid. As a result of the school's successful effort, it received a regular budget from the government and was able to move to a more suitable building. In 1966 the school built the first of many Community Welfare Centers, partially funded by Empress Farah, at which classes in literacy, child care, nutrition, and women's health and hygiene were offered. Each centre contained a family planning clinic.

International work

By 1972, Farman-Farmaian had attained a position on the board of the International Association of Schools of Social Work and had become a vice president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation through which she became a member of the "Forward Look Study" task force and the International Planned Parenthood Federation special mission to China. In addition, she served as a delegate to the Bucharest Population Conference (1974), the Tehran International Human Rights Conference (1975), and the Mexico International Conference for Women's Year (1976). She continued as director of the Tehran School of Social Work until 1979 when political upheaval forced her to flee the country.

Chapters in books

Journals and reports